Fire destroys family home
The clothes and hunting gear Graham and Joyce Candy packed for a long-awaited trip are all they have left after their remote rural Taranaki house burned to the ground.
Graham’s home for over 50 years, since the age of 16, on Mangaehu Rd, 40km east of Stratford, was well ablaze when fire crews arrived about 11am yesterday.
The couple had left home early in the morning bound for Raetihi, the first time they’d gone hunting for a long time.
They got a cell phone call near Stratford and turned back, Graham said. ‘‘My son said our house was on fire and he’d rung the fire brigade. We could see the smoke as we came back through Tututawa.’’
It took 40 minutes for the first firefighters to reach the house at Puniwakau, said chief fire officer Dion Howells of the Stratford Volunteer Fire Brigade.
Crews from Eltham and Toko brigades also attended, with tankers trucking in water to quell the flames.
Howells said the fire had started in the kitchen.
Ammunition stored in the house could be heard exploding as firefighters hosed the blaze with water and foam, and the couple’s winter supply of wood and coal stored near the back door burned on after much of the fire was put out.
Outside, Graham, 74, was coming to terms with the loss of his home of 56 years, and the trophies he had gathered over his lifetime of hunting.
‘‘I had a really good trophy collection, one of the best in Taranaki, one of every species of animal [that is hunted] in New Zealand. I can’t replace all those trophies – I’m too old now, but at least we weren’t in the house and the grandkids weren’t there.’’
The house was one of the original farmhouses in the area.
‘‘I’ve had a lot of fun in that house over the years, it’s a great spot. I’m the last man standing of the old generation, I jokingly tell people I’m the unofficial Mayor of Puniwakau,’’ he said.
The couple would stay with his son next door until they decided what to do, he said.
Fire and Emergency New Zealand crews were first called at about 10.15am on Wednesday, Central Fire Communication’s shift manager Carlos Dempsey said. Dempsey said the fire would be investigated.
Earlier yesterday fire crews were also called to a house fire in South Taranaki.
Fire and Emergency New Zealand received the call about a blaze on Nukumaru Station Rd, Waitotara, not long before 8am.
‘‘Crews had to fight it from the outside,’’ Dempsey said. He said the house appeared to be unoccupied and the fire was being investigated.